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Jan 16, 2010

Yours Truly - Your Ambition

The only thing that truly belongs to you in any absolute sense, is your unique, personal sense of ambition in life.

The question here actually begs as to what it means for something to belong to something/someone else?

Let’s make a neccessary distinction between the commonly used concepts of ownership, possession, title, property and the general idea of “having something” on one hand and true belongingness on the other. While you own things paid for, you possess objects and artifacts at your disposal, you have the title to your property, you “have” friends to call your own etc... none of them actually belong to you insofar all of them are 'not you' by their make/nature. Belonging, in the purest sense is matter of constitution, i.e. the very constitution(elemental construction) of an entity or a “thing” is what determines its belongingness.

From the instances mentioned above… the car by its constitution is metal and rubber, the watch would be metal and quartz by its make, the property is made up of a lot of cement and bricks (which in turn are reducible to matter “other than you”)…. Of course your friends are “whole other” human beings. So now what does it mean?? that all these things are by constitution, by nature's construct different from you, and while you may “have” them in some way or other, in some form or shape, by some arrangement or mechanism you may 'relate' to them…. They never completely “belong” to you.Your ambition on the other hand is an absolutely native element in your person. You’re ambition is made up of your emotions, your experiences, your feelings, your thoughts, your dreams, percepts, cognitions, your personal history and in fact your identity. All the else which make up the person that is you, which constitute your personhood. Thus, your ambition is made up of you.

Your ambition by its constitution is yours, it’s your personal reaction, response to the fact of existence. It’s logically and by the virtue of being 'immensly exclusively' related to you ...the highest and purest ideal in “your” life. It’s what gives meaning to your life, in fact it really is how you give meaning to your own life. The only thing worth the moment that it fills.

Disambiguation:

(i) Ambition is not just a career objective or a temporary goal. In fact it is not even just one thing, in its truest sense ambition is a dynamic equilibrium that you hope to achieve between your personal, professional and social goals

probably our thoughts nd dreams are motivated by our ambitions .. i hv seen guys who hv materialistic ambitions always dream n think about material things... however, emotions and love ... as they have always been .... may still be incomprehensible to our ambitions :)

so are we our ambitions? ... pata nahin yaar.. freud said we are our desires though ;)

@sanchit : i see where you re coming from on this buddy. But let me emphasize that i did not mean ambition as something disconnected or isolated from your physical,emotional and social self. Ambition is not just a career objetive or a temporary goal. In fact it is not even just one thing, in its truest sense ambition is a dynamic equilibrium that you hope to achieve between your personal, professional and social goals. Hope this ameleorates your concern :)

@ dhiraj : Same as i wrote for sanchit. Ambition must be taken broadly as in my article i have said that ambition is your "most personal responce to the fact of existence" and it neccessarily must include a congenial emotional end-state in addition to other end-stated that one aspires for.

The way you have defined ambition here is different from what would be the first recall one would get on hearing the word...which is why the ambiguity in response. While i do agree in some way that ambition is what makes you and you make the ambition, there is some void somewhere in this opinion that seems to be missing...but i dont know what :)